Help Documentation

Purpose and Scope

This tool is intended to aid determination of relevant literature sources for a given measurement of a thermodynamic or transport property. This tool must not be used as a substitute for the comprehensive literature review required by all journals, and no guarantee is made regarding completeness of the information provided.

Some chemical systems and property types are outside the scope of this tool. If you are unsure whether your systems/properties are within the scope, the short series of questions on the linked form can be used to determine applicability. (Scope Evaluation)

How the tool works

User input:

  1. System type (pure compound, binary mixture, or ternary mixture)
  2. Chemical compounds (name, formula, and CASRN are provided)
    1. Wildcards (*) can be used in compound names to aid searching.
    2. Because of ambiguities with compound names, use of CASRNs is recommended.
    3. If a valid CASRN is entered and no compound is found, no literature involving that compound is available in ThermoLit.
    4. If a previously selected compound is needed, the user can choose "Select from Compound Cache", and a list of compounds selected during the current session is conveniently provided.
  3. Property
    1. Properties are selected through (at most) 2 steps (Select Property Group then Property)
    2. All transport properties (viscosity, thermal conductivity, electrical conductivity, and diffusion coefficients) are within the single Transport Properties group.
    3. Some properties require phase specification.

Program output:

  1. A list of references to relevant experimental data.
    1. References for closely related properties are also provided. (For example, if the property of interest is vapor pressure, sources of sublimation pressures are also listed.)
  2. Temperature and pressure ranges (as appropriate) for the literature data are listed after each reference.

Output format:

  1. The literature list (displayed at the bottom of the program interface) is updated dynamically for the particular system/compound/property combination on view.
    1. If the user is interested in a single property for a series of mixtures with 1 or 2 components held constant (this is common), this feature provides immediate results by simply replacing one mixture component.
    2. Similarly, if multiple properties are of interested for one mixture, only the property is changed by the user to obtain updated results.
  2. The user can choose to store any returned literature list in a Report Draft that can be saved to the user's computer in PDF format when done.

Demonstrations Watch animated demonstations of how to use this tool.